Flyers looking to get their swagger back

By JACK McCAFFERY

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

VOORHEES, N.J. - After they lost for the fifth time in six games, but before two days of intense practice, the Flyers met Monday night for a team card game. Considering their position in the Atlantic Division race, it was as good a time as any to work on their poker faces and their power play.

As they practiced Wednesday at the Skate Zone, the Flyers were 10 points behind the New York Rangers with 26 games to play, just one of those a head-to-head. Since they are not about to fold, at least they could act confident.

"We have not been happy with the last two weeks or more," Jody Shelley said. "But if we continue to work, we will realize how good we can be. And the fans will realize it, too."

The Flyers will entertain the Buffalo Sabres Thursday, and they believe two days of higher-level practice in something of a mini-mini-camp will have them prepared. It's almost certain they will have their preferred goalie, Ilya Bryzgalov, back from the flu. As for their power play, on which they have gone 0-for-13, that well might be better, too, for the three-day break.

"Specialty teams factors into the game and we haven't been winning that battle lately," Peter Laviolette said. "So we have to score some goals and make sure we're doing the job on the penalty kill. Both are doing a little bit extra, focusing a little extra attention over there on the course of the few days off here."

The X's and O's are sophisticated but standard, with the Flyers knowing where to skate, when and how with a man advantage. What cannot as easily be improved with concentration -- on the white

board and on the ice - is their self-confidence.

"When you're feeling comfortable and you have that swagger, you're coming to the rink and you're not worried about anything else," Danny Briere said. "You just know you're going to win. You have that feeling coming in. You're not hoping that you will get some bounces.

"That's the attitude that we have to find again - not waiting for a bounce to go our way, but to try to create our own bounces, get off to a good start, score the first goal, just keep moving ahead like we do when we're feeling good, when we're on our game.''

For now, they remain convinced that they can compete with anybody.

"You better believe it," Scott Hartnell said. "We have a young group - an inexperienced group, I guess - going into the stretch run here. But that can be a great thing for us not to have the pressures going.

"I'm glad we are having our hiccup now rather than with 10 games to go and you lose nine out of 10 and you barely squeak into the playoffs."

Two seasons ago, the Flyers needed to win in a shootout on the final game of the season to reach the playoffs, then kept playing until overtime of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals. So they are convincing themselves that it is better to be rolling late, even if there might be some February failures.

"It obviously would be nice to finish first," Hartnell said. "You want to finish as high as you can. But on the flip side, you want to get in the playoffs. You don't want to let this time slip away. We have some big games coming up. The last couple of weeks have been kind of tough on the win column, but I think every team goes through stretches where injuries hit them or have some tough breaks or some bad games.

"Hopefully, the last couple of weeks was the end of it and we can start a new page."

So they worked on their special teams and their conditioning and their health, and they worked hard.

In more ways than one, they played hard, too.

"This week was great to get a little break," Max Talbot said. "We played eight games in 13 days. That's a lot of hockey. It was nice to get two good practices, to talk about things and focus on this weekend."